>Happy Mother’s Day to everyone out there! We’ve had a pretty tough week at our house. Everyone with the exception of me has been sick. My husband, who I depend on probably way to much started the lot of them off be getting sick on Tuesday and the rest followed suit by Wednesday night. My daughter has been stuck in the house with a fever of over 100 and unable to see her friends, while her brother who is only 4 months old got so sick he started wheezing and had to spend the night in the hospital. Hopefully everyone is on the mends but at this point fevers are still haunting everyone. I feel so bad for them, and I’m feeling pretty darn down myself. It’s really hard being the caregiver to a bunch of sickies. It makes me really value my husband who helped out tremendously at the end of each of my pregnancies and is amazing with me when I’m sick. I wish I wasn’t pissed that he’s sick. He’s trying really hard. But in order to help everyone out I decided or was that my husband decided that I needed a couple of minutes alone to eat dinner. (It was probably him, he says I have a martyr complex.) Anyway, dinner took all of 30 seconds to eat, cold pizza from when we sat down and hour and a half ago but I wasn’t allowed to eat back then. So I decided to do a posting of things I’ve seen on the interwebs that I’ve liked or am inspired by. I’m hoping this will help me…. Be happy.

First My Go-Go Life is having a giveaway of some super cute fabric.

Pretty fabric! Enter here!

She’s got a great blog. I love the baby bibs she made. Check out this quilt she made for her grandma. So super cute.

Have you been to the Sew Mama Sew website yet? I bought some fabric for a quilt that I’m going to make that I saw on the Oh! Fransson blog. Well Sew Mama Sew has an amazing collection of Holiday (Christmas and such) crafts under their Ultimate Handmade Holidays Master List. I have not had a ton of time to peruse but it’s all categorized and there is years worth of lists! How awesome is that? Some of the categories are:
Elementary Kids
Organizers
Sports Fans

Well it looks like that’s all the time I have at the moment. It does make me happy to look at the pretty things on each of these sites and share them with you. (FYI: My husband just walked through the room with my son, who just pee’d on him. For the record, he’s now pee’d on papa, poo’d on papa, poo’d on mama and thrown up on mama today… sigh.)

Don’t forget to enter the giveaway at My Go-Go Life.

Thanks for reading! Leave a Comment. You know it would make my day.

Be Happy!

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>Well just for those that are curious. I am not sure that I can say that time outs are working, but I can tell you they are being had. It’s hard to tell if I am actually changing Tesla’s behavior or if it’s because she’s just forgotten to do what she was doing in the first place. I do however always tell her why she’s been in time out. Again not sure how much she is really hearing. Last week, she went into timeout for something, I think touching the oven. (Not the front of the oven but the side where she can could potentially hurt herself. However I also don’t want her to play with the oven. It’s not a toy.) So I put her in time out. She didn’t cry one bit. When I came back after 1 minute I picked her up I started to tell her why she went into time out and that mama loves her, when she hit me so hard. I immediately put her right in time out. When I picked her up again, she proceeded to hit me over and over again. I put her back in time out. But then when I picked her up the third time I explained that I loved her and that there was no hitting mama, and she didn’t hit me, she was fine. It’s pretty hard to do, but I’m hoping like with everything I do with her, she’s learning.

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I did it. I put my daughter in time out. Oh my goodness that was hard. As I mentioned in my previous post Hitting… Ouch!!! Tesla has been hitting Jason and I a lot. This weekend she hit me over the head with my hair brush, not with the top of it but with the side. Hard and multiple times. But I just took the brush away and said that it hurt and didn’t let her play with it anymore that day. (She likes to brush my hair… it generally hurts when she does this but I figure there’s a learning curve there. My sister also used to hurt me when brushing my hair and she’s 8 years older than me. Did I mention that she’s turning 40???)

>About two weeks ago our little sweet funny girl started hitting. Well I guess the first time she did it was over a month ago. I remember it distinctly. She was getting into the pantry. I picked her up and said no, and she slugged me in the chin. I was stunned, one that someone so small could hit so hard and two that she was doing it period. I immediately held her out from me, and she went in to bite me. Again stunned. Now on a daily basis she is hitting either just me or both Jason and I. She’s generally frustrated when this occurs so it’s not like she’s just coming up and hitting us. Although last week when she had a little friend over, she hit her little friend to. Her friend is only 8 months old and can barely stand so it’s not like she could hit back, oh and of course I remember now that she also hit someone in her baby class last week and at story time. Dang. I have a hitter.

Now how could such a sweet little angel develop this behavior?? How? Seriously, do you know? My husband and I don’t hit each other. We’ve never hit Tesla. We don’t hit other people. What is the deal?  We don’t have a yelling household, we don’t fight, and we’re generally pretty happy.

I of course started researching this, the What to Expect the Toddler Years folks have this behavior appearing around 20 months and that it could be: (amongst other things)

• Low impulse control, hit hit hit.
• To much pint up energy, suggestion give them something to hit, pillow banging toys. Run them around more. 
• Reaction to frustration. “Mama is mean for not letting me have [insert anything] and there for I will hit her over and over again.” 

So what to do. Well no matter what it’s caused from,  I have to do something. It’s actually starting to hurt and I do not want this behavior to continue. One of these days she’s going to get frustrated with a little tike and belt them one and that’s not going to go over very well.

What am I doing now? I am working on more activity. Tesla actually takes two naps a day that last two hours. So it’s not as if she’s not getting tired, but perhaps this aggression can be curbed by running around more, and actually getting the aggression out of her.  Today for instance, we had our dancing and singing class, and then when we got home we played soccer and ran all around the house. She hoops and hollers with excitement when she kicks the ball.

We’re also going to try some timeouts. WHAT??? I know I know, she seems to young but I have been reading this blog about organizing, and parenting in general, I asked the writer for advice. I like her style of parenting, doesn’t mean I’ll do everything that she does but I enjoy reading her blog and getting new ideas for home. Anyway, she said that she’s not to young. In fact she wrote about putting her one year old in time out. You can check out her blog here. She said that you put her in port a crib with a few toys and let her sit there for 1 minute. She said that if I do this after a dozen or so times she’ll learn that she doesn’t want to hit Mama. So we’re going to try it. Yikes, I’m not sure I’m ready for this, but again, as I rub my jaw, the hitting has to stop. I just need to get the port a crib back from my mom and we’ll give it a go.

I’ll let you know how it goes, in the mean time, please feel free to leave a comment and let me know how you stopped hitting or your thoughts.